They have a beta for this, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the final version looks like. I'm also curious if other major platforms like steam/epic/origin will encourage this and compete - or shut it all down and be a pain in the ass. Probably the latter, but who knows.

While I agree smoking and vaping are not safe in any quantity - I disagree with the idea of banning it completely and I especially disagree with this weird half-step of banning specific flavors as an attempt to reduce teen use.
I think we should strongly discourage the use of tobacco and any nicotine products, including heavy taxation and possibly other means - but I don't think it should be banned. I totally understand the argument of "it provides no benefit to society" but I draw the line at curtailing people's freedom. Someone can choose to drink alcohol to excess every day of their life, and suffer health consequences and that's perfectly legal. Same could be said for over-eating, or lack or lack of exercise or a myriad of other personal choices that remain legal. The few times I can support bans/restrictions would be when it affects the public at large, such as banning smoking in most buildings, and this already has strong support.
I think we need to treat vaping exactly the same as smoking (which is basically what we're doing now), but banning specific products due to their flavor is misguided.

HTC Vive Cosmos
product page - https://www.vive.com/us/product/cosmos/
1440 x 1700 pixels per eye (2880 x 1700 pixels combined)
110-degree field-of-view
90Hz refresh rate
$699
New consumer best specced model?
I wonder if this will push down the price of the Valve unit.
Best value is still the Samsung that goes on sale constantly.

I do not like this analogy at all.
Alcohol can be consumed regularly (in moderation) for an entire lifetime with zero long term health affects.
Smoking cannot be done safely in any quantity. Period. Full stop.

Yea we did that a while back...
actually even further back...
I'm also expecting some additional kpop stuff, and another big music video for the world's competition which is coming up in the next month.

I'm not a fan of vaping/smoking but I feel as though this ban is misguided. Are we going to ban flavored liquor as well? The issue of teen/youth vaping isn't purely because of the flavors, it's attacking a symptom instead of the root problem.
I think a better question would be why in the fuck was Juul invited to school campuses to discuss vaping, and then why were they allowed to flat out lie about the health affects?
Source1: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/juul-came-to-a-9th-grade-classroom-and-told-teens-their-products-were-totally-safe-according-to-teens-testimonies/
Source2: https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/emerging-tobacco-products/5-takeaways-congressional-hearings-juul-and-youth-e
I think the obvious restriction would be hitting e-cigarette brands with the same restrictions as normal smoking brands - limiting their ability to advertise. My limited understanding is that Juul (owned 35% by philip morris/altria) is going to start moving forward by opening retail locations - which I think should be strictly controlled.
As much as I hate to suggest some sort of public information campaign, I do think proper education for children in school about the negative impacts of vaping would be another step in the right direction.

source - https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/11/20861018/trump-vape-juul-ban-flavored-fda-e-cigarette
I have to say I'm a little surprised. That sounds like a pretty major move that will cut down on young people vaping.

I finished this last week. The main story isn't great, and I personally enjoyed reading the lore from various collectables far more than the dialogue/exposition. I still consider this to be the best version of RTX currently on the market (and probably for the significant future), even if you treat this game as an RTX tech demo it's probably worth buying.
There's some announcements that this game will get DLC sometime next year, as well as some additional free content in the future. I'll pick that up when it comes out.
https://controlgame.com/control-community-blog-whats-new/

source - https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/10/iphone-xr-8-price-cut/
Apple had their big event today. I mentioned this offline but I told you this would happen. Apple is very consistent about this.
Very good chance I will move my mom to an XR later this year from her current iPhone 6 Plus. It will be a big upgrade in terms of CPU, memory and camera.

New Agesa versions are being released by motherboard vendors - the beta versions are already out and should pass testing sometime this week. This version fixes some of the lower boost clocks. There was a minor kerfuffle when DerBaur posted a video with a survey of Ryzen 3000 owners that showed most people weren't hitting the advertised boost clocks. Of course Intel then decided to take the results from this survey and put it in their marketing material... along with some other sleazy/misleading bullshit.
This latest Agesa version appears to fix the "low" boost clocks and some minor thermal performance. Most people are seeing between 25-75hz improvements on single core boost, which equates to single core performance of +2%, I'd consider that within the margin of error but w/e.

So I figure I might as well reuse the thread for the movie to talk about the Netflix series I am watching. I'm more than a few episodes in so I feel comfortable posting about it. It sticks very faithfully to the formula set down to the movie but there is just more of it now:

imdb - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1441395/
This got a lot of buzz when it first came out because there is a lot of nudity and sex but I often saw people mentioning that they thought the story and acting was good so I randomly decided to give it a shot when I saw it pop up on Netflix.
It definitely earns the horror label but it's much more about psychological than any kind of gore. Feels like a low budget indie film (even with candid camera scenes) but obviously stars a big name and had a budget in the millions.
It was pretty weird. Even beyond just building suspense the movie is very slow.
The acting and story was OK but you spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is going on because they only give you hints.
I probably would not recommend this since it's just a bit too weird.

imdb - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6565702/
There is nothing to like about this movie. A million plot holes, strange situations and important things simply not explained. Completely forgettable. I don't recommend this to anyone.

kobo libra h2o
$170 - https://us.kobobooks.com/collections/ereaders/products/kobo-libra-h2o
waterproof
7.0" 300ppi screen
physical buttons
8gb built in storage
quick review - https://www.digitaltrends.com/ebook-reader-reviews/kobo-libra-h20-review/
This is a brand new model from kobo and I will probably buy this. It's very similar to some of their other models but it's a solid combination of features for the price.

I'm six episodes in (so only two more to go). I'm going to finish it but I have a lot of problems with this show.
Take all the fantasy races and replace them with "foreign, poor people". Take the evil monster (it's in the trailer) and replace it with "jack the ripper". Take the half-magic enemy nation and replace it with "generic faceless enemy nation". You can do all those replacements very easily because none of the core story elements seem to rely on any of them being special/fantasy. I think it's good for fantasy stories to borrow from reality, to make good drama using things we know, but the fantasy elements in this are practically inconsequential.
Regarding the story itself, I'm completely bored with the two main characters. The side characters have a bit more interesting stories.
I already mentioned the dialogue not being good. It does not get better.
I am already going to say that unless you find the trailer really exciting, skip this.